


Drabbles:  Difference

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Drabble Sequence, Gen, Quadruple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-11
Updated: 2011-11-11
Packaged: 2017-10-25 22:28:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/275535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of contrasts between sisters and between time.  Just a writing exercise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drabbles:  Difference

When her husband returns from the war, Bethany decides that she will be chaste and proffers her hand. Things do not work out as she’d planned. She finds herself swept up in her lord husband’s arms, and as he kisses her deeply, she spies her sister, alone and forgotten in a corner. The pure hatred on her face chills Bethany, but she puts it aside and does not give it a second thought as Roose escorts her to their chambers. As they frantically tear at each other’s clothing, all she can think of is how she has ached for him.

She had resigned herself to her marriage. Even if she did not love Willam, she’d learned to appreciate him. Was that not what her father had intended with Bethany’s marriage? Barbrey is unsurprised when he does not return to her. Her life has been a long series of scenes that did not play, aborted attempts at a life, at a connection. He was a friend and a bedpartner, nothing more, but she will miss their private jokes, his gentle presence that tempered her harsher one. When her sister and brother-in-law embrace in front of her, she feels nothing but rage.

Things are different when Bethany finds out about the other child, the miller’s wife’s boy, the bastard in the village. She had wondered when the perfection and serenity of her life would finally shatter, and this, like small cracks compromising a mirror, strain her mind and her heart. Her lord husband does not suspect that she has finally learned his secret, and with all luck, it will remain thus. She locks herself away and turns all of her love towards her boy, her perfect child, their last hope, really, and hopes that it will be enough. It has to be.

When next she visits, Barbrey is quietly stunned at how different things have become. Her nephew has gone south to squire for a lesser lord, and his gentle yet noble presence is sorely missed in the quiet rooms and lonely corridors. Bethany and Roose sit in separate rooms, blind and deaf to each other in every way. They do not touch, they do not connect, they merely go through empty courteous motions with her, their banal inanities masking something that she would rather not breach. Compared to how they were a year ago, the difference is both sad and startling.


End file.
